


Eden Revoked

by heartswells



Series: Medical History AUs [3]
Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1930s, Alternate Universe - Historical, Dust Bowl, Dust pneumonia, Goodbyes, Great Depression, Grief, Love, M/M, Poverty, Self-Sacrifice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-11
Updated: 2020-04-11
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:00:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23485690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartswells/pseuds/heartswells
Summary: “Sam, please don’t allow this to be in vain. If you love me, you’ll go.” A drop of water fell onto Sam’s hands, and in a bout of hysterical hope, he thought it had begun raining, that their problems were solved—but then he realized that Erik was crying, and the gravity of Erik’s resolution finally bore down on him in entirety.
Relationships: Samuel Girard/Erik Johnson
Series: Medical History AUs [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1525517
Comments: 8
Kudos: 29





	Eden Revoked

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so, so much, [moey](https://lesbianfilipzadina.tumblr.com/), for beta-ing and all your support and enthusiasm. ♡ This was a very difficult piece to write, and your feedback and support were essential. ily moey.
> 
> **content warning:** poverty, illness, death (mentioned).

“I’m sor—” A fit of coughing wracked Erik as he spoke, and his apology went unfinished. Comical nickered and nudged his cheek with her nose to soothe him, but as he gasped around his coughs, he inhaled the thick dust embedded in her coat and was forced to turn away. When Erik’s breathing finally calmed, he raised a trembling hand to stroke her one last time; she was emaciated, and her bones felt brittle beneath his fingertips. 

  
  


Erik passed Comical’s lead to a man in a suit whose callous eyes promised that he would never love her and watched them leave. He was too ashamed to vocalize a goodbye; he had forsaken her and was no longer worthy of her sympathy. Comical turned to look at Erik one last time as she was led away, and Erik wondered what he had really sold her for. In her dying state, she could do so little. Probably, she had been sentenced to some yankee factory where she would never see a blue sky again. Piece by piece, Erik had sold away all that he loved. What did he have left of himself? If everything worked as intended, nothing. 

  
  


Erik rolled up the cash from Comical’s sale in his palm and clutched it tightly. He no longer had pockets to safely store it in; extra cloth was a luxury, and Sam had cut away their pockets to patch the few garments they had remaining. The bills felt meager in Erik’s hands. Five years ago, Erik could have sold a mare like Comical for two hundred dollars; today, he had sold her for a pitiful six dollars. It felt surreal to be in possession of any money, and he felt it in his grasp like he felt fear and anger in his chest. Here was paper; here was power; here was scarcity; here was hope; here was exploitation. Erik wondered if this would be the last time he ever touched a dollar—it didn’t matter if it was. He did not intend to keep the money for himself.

  
  


Erik began the trek home. The dirt road was wicked hot beneath his feet, but his shoes were tattered and did little to protect him. As the walk stretched before him, he began to fear that he had lost his way, for the land was utterly markerless. There were but two things: dirt and sky, interrupted only by the tips of fence posts and tops of roofs. There were no crops; no grasses; no rivers; no trees; no life, just an unearthly vacantness.

  
  


It was hard to believe that this had ever been the Eden of Erik’s childhood.

  
  


Erik migrated from Missouri to Colorado when he was fifteen. In 1918, the influenza epidemic arrived to ravage St. Louis, and among the many lives it robbed was Erik’s mother’s. She had been a talented seamstress, and with the loss of her love came also the loss of her income. Unable to afford their land without her, the ranch Erik had grown up on had been foreclosed and their horses seized. Everything they had to their name had been lost, but Erik’s father had heard tell of a fancy new government deal in Colorado that promised any man with intentions to farm three hundred acres of land for his own. Thus, desperate and impoverished, Erik and his father had traveled northwest.

  
  


Influenza took his father two days before Erik crossed the Colorado border into Baca County. Now alone, Erik had forged his age on the paperwork and laid claim to the land himself. It had passed into 1919, and Erik was ten years late to the Enlarged Homestead Act, so the land that he claimed lay on the outskirts, labeled unwanted by all that had come before him, but when Erik finally arrived, he dropped to his knees and sobbed for its beauty. He was starved and exhausted without a roof to shelter him, armed with nothing but a bag of corn seeds, and he did not know how he would upturn all this land by himself, but he had no other choice than to do so. 

  
  


In 1920, prohibition desiccated America. Unable to afford wheat seeds, Erik had planted broomcorn, and poverty reframed itself as divine intervention. Erik, along with many others, used his broomcorn to brew bootleg whiskey, and he flourished, overwhelmed with wealth as Jazz Age America scrambled to skirt the law. He used the money to buy more land, build a solid home, and attain the most advanced equipment available. Eventually, Erik acquired enough money and land to build a stable and buy horses, honoring the love of his childhood. He named his first mare Comical and sobbed into her mane with joy. By the time Prohibition was rescinded, Erik was able to transition to wheat production with ease with the additional bonus of the reputation of his horses to cushion him. 

  
  


Throughout it all, Erik remained alone. He would have done well to take a wife, and rumors spread about him, the strange, toothless man on the edge of town, but Erik was content—until 1926, when he met a French Canadian boy named Samuel. Sam knew little English, and what had brought him to Baca, Erik never found out, but he had been inexplicably drawn to him. Erik had offered him work maintaining his stables under the charitable guise of helping Sam establish himself in town, but then Sam never left, becoming an intrinsic part of Erik’s life from the first breath they shared, unspoken, accidental, and divine. He came to Erik like faith, restoring a tenderness in him that he had stopped believing in after his mother’s death

  
  


For three blissful years, they thrived together, selling wheat and whiskey, breeding horses, and growing exponentially in wealth. Black Tuesday came in 1929, and the stock market crashed, an unprecedented economic catastrophe, but way out in the Colorado Plains, miles away from Wall Street, they believed they were immune. 

  
  


And then the banks closed and robbed them of their wealth.

  
  


Apprehension built but they kidded themselves that another good year selling wheat would allow them to bounce back. This was temporary! 

  
  


Except the rain also stopped. The first months without it were unsettling, but rain was said to follow the plow. It was simply a bad year, a fluke. When man made a farm, god made a raincloud. Upturning the earth created atmospheric disturbances that _caused_ rain. Rain was the inevitable soulmate of the plow. Drought was unscientific, ungodly, an utterly laughable proposition. But the rain never came. The land, abused and depleted by unsustainable farming, was no longer held down by the prairie grasses, and the topsoil lay loose and dry, unable to sow anything but revenge.

  
  


In 1930, the first duster arrived. Erik remembered it as the second time that he lost faith in god and the first time that Sam did. It had been sudden: the wind turned fierce and the land revolted as dirt was swept into the air in a vengeful fury. All had turned dark, the dust so thick in the air that no light could break through. It slipped through the cracks of their house and assaulted their skin, every grain like a needle. They could hear nothing but the frightful howl of the wind and the clatter of dust colliding with the windows and walls. Terror possessed them as they struggled to breathe, pressing their shirts to their faces. When it finally ended, six of their horses had suffocated, and their crops had been ripped from their roots. 

  
  
  


That had been three years ago. Since then, the great dusters had only grown in vengeance.

  
  
  


When Erik arrived home, Sam was wetting the linens that covered their windows to catch the dust that slipped through the sills during the storms. Sam turned and swore in relief. Erik’s unexplained absence had terrified him. He had feared that Erik would become stranded in a duster, and he had imagined in visceral, anxiety-induced detail the excruciating pain that Erik would experience as he suffocated. Sam had pictured the futile hours that he would spend searching for him, scraping away at the ground with his bare hands as he hopelessly sought Erik’s body, if only to kiss him goodbye one last time before being forced to bury him again beneath the ground that had killed him. 

  
  


“Where have you been?” Sam demanded, angry with Erik for disappearing so irresponsibly.

  
  


Erik walked over and shoved the crumpled cash into Sam’s hands. Most days, Erik feared to touch him as the static charge brought to the air by the dusters would knock them both back, and he savored the brief brush of his skin against Sam’s as he was granted this one last kindness on the day before he lost him. 

  
  


“Erik, how did you get this?” Sam gaped at him, utterly bewildered. Erik couldn’t have sold the farm, it wasn’t worth enough, but there wasn’t any work around either, and the only thing they had left of any value was—

  
  


“You sold Comical!” Sam was furious—but he was also fearful. Whatever had driven Erik to the desperation necessary to sell her had to be absolutely dire.

  
  


“You need to leave, Sammy,” Erik said.

  
  


“What?” Sam was incredulous. 

  
  


Erik reached out and cupped Sam’s hands in his own and curled Sam’s fingers closed around the cash as he cradled them. He couldn’t bear to look Sam in the eyes, so he focused on his hands instead. They looked sickly.

  
  


“There’s nothing left for you here, Sam. This will get you a train ticket home.” Erik’s voice was laden with grief.

  
  


“Erik, no!” Sam was enraged. How could Erik ask him to leave after everything they had endured together? And to sell Comical to do so? It was profane, and Sam felt insulted.

  
  


“Sam, please don’t allow this to be in vain. If you love me, you’ll go.” A drop of water fell onto Sam’s hands, and in a bout of hysterical hope, he thought it had begun raining, that their problems were solved—but then he realized that Erik was crying, and the gravity of Erik’s resolution finally bore down on him in entirety. 

  
  


“I do love you, and that’s why I’m going to stay, and if—” Sam burst into a fit of coughing, hacking up globules of dark bile into his arm. Erik braced Sam’s shoulders as he coughed to stop him from toppling over. Sam had an exceptionally bad case of dust pneumonia. This land, once hailed by lungers as a cure for tuberculosis, had turned on them, and now it invaded their bodies and robbed them of breath. The plains would live in Sam’s lungs until he died, but he did not need to die now, not here, not if Erik could prevent it. 

  
  


“Sammy, there’s nothing left for you here. This land has forsaken us. We have no food, no money, no crops. Help isn’t coming. Please, allow me the peace of knowing that you’re safe. Don’t stay here to die, Sam. Don’t make me watch that. Whatever happens to me, I can make peace with as long as I have the comfort of knowing that you’re still alive.” 

  
  


“You want me to leave you so that you can die by yourself?” 

  
  


“I’ll find a way, Sam.” Rumors of government programs offering work were spreading. Erik might sustain himself on them, but he doubted he could also sustain Sam, and Sam was too weakened by his pneumonia to endure hard labor. 

  
  


“I won’t leave.” 

  
  


“Sam, _please._ You must.”

  
  


“Go with me then,” Sam urged. They wouldn't get far together with so little money, but they could at least escape the borders of the bowl.

  
  


“No, Sam.” Erik was tied to this land—it was his heart, his soul, the only thing he knew—but Sam was young and intelligent. He could escape Colorado and build a new life. Erik never should have allowed him to settle here for so long. A more selfless lover would have encouraged Sam to take his talents elsewhere years ago. Instead, Erik had tied him to the lonely hardship of the plains and damned him to suffering.

  
  


“Erik…” Sam felt betrayed and abandoned. Erik was doing this out of love, but to ask of Sam something so burdensome felt hateful. 

  
  


Sam wanted to walk outside, open his hands, and allow the money to float away on the wind, ridding him of the burden of choice. How could Erik ask him to say yes? To say, I will abandon you to die?

  
  


“Sam, I am begging you. I know what I am asking is immense, and I am asking it selfishly, Sammy. This land is my burden, but it is not yours. I am begging you to do what I cannot do, to do this for _me_. Please. Go.” Sam was the only thing that Erik had left to love, and he needed to know that love was safe, needed to know that something on this ungodly earth was still sacred. If he could only know that, then Erik could content himself to endure any pain. 

  
  


Sam understood then, and he despised Erik for it, but somewhere along the way, the intersection between their needs had merged. What Erik needed had become what Sam needed because what they needed was one another. They were a tautology. If Erik said he needed Sam to leave, then Sam needed it too, and he would do it because that was what it meant for them to love one another, no matter how much it hurt him. 

  
  


“Please, just give me one last night with you,” Sam whispered. He reached up to wrap his arms around Erik’s neck and kissed him, and Erik sobbed against his lips as he remembered the first time Sam had kissed him when they were still rich and drunk and free.

  
  


Erik pulled away, and Sam cursed him.

  
  


“No, Sam, you need to go now. Another storm could come. What if this is your only chance? What if the next one kills you?” Erik tried to back away as he spoke, but Sam began to cry, and his lungs simply could not bear it. He fell to his knees, coughing and sobbing, and Erik followed him, pulling him into his chest. Erik pressed his face against Sam’s cheek and stroked his hair. Erik’s grief was unbearable, even as he held Sam’s living form, and memories poured from his mouth in elegy. He described to Sam the way that his beauty had stunned him the first time they met; the awe that he had felt the first time he heard him sing; the terror that he had felt upon realizing that he loved him; and the elation that he had felt the first time they embraced—things that Sam could never forget but that they were both suddenly afraid he would.

  
  


“Don’t forget me,” Sam begged. 

  
  


“I never could, Sam, I never could.”

  
  


Erik and Sam had few possessions, and there was nothing Sam could leave to remind Erik of him. They had no clothes to spare one another, no pictures, no books, no trinkets. Sam had nothing but the dust in his lungs to remind him of Erik, and Erik had nothing but memories so sweet that, lost in his wasteland, he would soon begin to question were real. 

  
  


“I won’t forget you,” Sam promised. “When this is all over, I’m coming back. I’m going to find you, Erik. I promise. I won’t let this be forever. I’ll be back.” 

  
Erik wanted to beg him not to, but he was afraid that if he did, then Sam would refuse to leave. Instead, Erik hoped that simply leaving the deadend emptiness of the plains would awaken Sam to all that he had been missing, to all that he deserved but could not find in Baca. He hoped that Sam would understand then why Erik had forced him to go.

  
  


He hoped that Sam would be able to forgive him.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I usually have an excessive source list at the end of my historical fics, but in this case, I do not. The Dust Bowl is one of my favorite time periods to study, and as a result, I was able to write the majority of this without using specific references. [Here](https://www.history.com/topics/great-depression/dust-bowl) is a good summary of the Dust Bowl era if you're unfamiliar or curious.
> 
> Notes on Historical Inaccuracies: I could not find applicable information on the prices of horses or train tickets in the 1920s and 1930s to reference. The proclamation that Comical was once worth $200 (approx. $3k c. 1928) and was sold for $6 (approx. $120 c. 1933) is based on an inflation calculator and the fact that Erik wears #6—which is to say, horrendously inaccurate.


End file.
